


Closer In Waves

by cirque



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Apocalypse, Community: apocalypse_kree, Female Friendship, Stranded, Wraith invasion of earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 15:51:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm sorry the end of the world isn't entertaining enough for you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closer In Waves

Vala thinks P3X-706 is too warm. Her uniform clings to her skin and she peels it off in exasperated sighs. The planet has three suns, one of which is much closer than Vala feels naturally comfortable with, and the sky is heavy with them, orange in the daytime, redder at night. She lies on the sandy grass and covers her eyes.

"Bored?" Says Sam. Her voice is quiet, as if speaking will ruin the moody grief that has had them both silent this past day.

Vala tips her head back; she can see Sam half-sitting in the tent they pitched last night. She is wearing her full uniform, jacket and all, and Vala can see in her red face that the heat bothers her, too. Vala rolls her eyes.

She hears the clatter of boots as Sam gets to her feet, the metal of her gun clicking as she checks it yet again.

"I'm sorry the end of the world isn't entertaining enough for you."

 

* * *

 

 

MREs taste different when you're all too aware that they are in short supply. Vala eats hers steadily, not complaining about the taste. Food is strength, after all. They need strength, if nothing else.

The fire they have stoked is unnecessary for heat, but essential for safety. Vala doesn't need to make Sam explain why she doesn't feel safe on a strange planet in pitch dark. They sit either side of the fire, eyes anywhere but on the other. Sam has been crying, or perhaps she has yet to stop.

"Please talk," says Vala, "You're killing me here."

Sam curls her arms around her knees, pulling them against her chest. There is little to say.

Vala feels it too, of course, the gaping emptiness around the fire, places that should be filled with the people Sam loves, people Vala has come to love too.

Vala also feels Sam, sole survivor of earth, only other occupant of P3X-706 but all too far away.

"Tell me why you chose this planet."

Sam shifts. She pokes the fire and it splinters at her. "It was one of several in the running for the Alpha and Gamma sites, but eventually we decided it was too warm. It's uninhabited, unnoticed by the Goa'uld. Eventually its suns will irradiate the atmosphere but for the next few hundred years or so, it is safe."

"Safe," says Vala, "Safe is good."

She cannot help but think of Earth, skies dotted with Wraith ships and 302s, and in the madness of it all Daniel had pulled her toward the gate with a strength she had not known he possessed.

Sam shakes her head. "We left them."

"Yeah."

"I left them."

"You had no choice. _We_ had no choice."

"Fifteen years and they never left me."

"They were right behind us."

"I left Cassie."

Vala left Adria, too, many times.

"You've still got me."

Sam closes her eyes. "I'm going to bed."

It is hours later, Sam breathing deep against her back, and Vala realizes that surviving isn't good enough anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

It takes three days for Sam to break. There is a moment when she is cleaning her gun, routine and silent, and then the next she is clinging to Vala as though the sky is falling. Her nails are regulation-short but her grip is tight enough to leave marks all the same. Vala pats her hair. She is terrible at comfort.

"I left him."

Vala does not ask which 'him' she means. It is easier to think she means them all, means SG-1, means the fallen warriors she has fought for her life with.

"Do you think the _Odyssey_ got away?" Vala asks, eventually.

The _Hammond_ was incinerated before Sam had the chance to rejoin the crew. The _Daedalus_ fell defending Atlantis. Vala has minimal hope for the _Odyssey_.

"Maybe."

"Think they'll find us?"

"Maybe." Sam wipes her eyes on her sleeve and tries to pull away from Vala. They are very close and Vala has Sam's smudged makeup across her chin.

"I think they will, too."

Vala doesn't, of course, but she sees a desperation in Sam's eyes that needs encouraging, not destroying. Vala knows how crucial hope can be.

 

* * *

 

 

Vala cuts her combat pants to make shorts. The planet is mostly desert terrain and occasional marshes and so there is no long grass to snare her ankles. She even manages to make them look vaguely good.

"That's clever," says Sam, without looking.

It is the end of their first week stranded on P3X-706 and Vala can count on one hand the amount of waking hours Sam has spent away from the planet's DHD.

She finishes a sequence now and Vala looks up to watch the gate thrum into life, spin like the toys she used to play with as a child.

Sam cuts the sequence off before the gate can connect. It will do no good to let the Wraith know where they are.

Vala rolls her eyes. "I don't know why you bother with that. It's just noisy."

Sam lays both palms flat against the DHD, heated in the sun. "I need to hear it, that's all."

"When you can make it dial somewhere other than this galaxy, or Pegasus for that matter, you let me know." Vala isn't foolish enough to think she can take on the entirety of the Wraith race. She is not so sure about Sam.

Sam does not speak to her for two days.

 

* * *

 

 

Vala dreams of Qetesh. She dreams they are running, Jaffa flanking them, and Baal pursues them. Qetesh's voice is panicked in her head, and Vala feels her body ache with the pace, her feet sore as they slap against hard stone.

Baal will kill her to get at Qetesh, she has no doubt.

She feels a staff blast shake the ground and she gasps, tumbling, until the dream falls away and she awakens to Sam, shaking her shoulders.

"You were shouting."

"I was dreaming. Or rather, remembering."

Sam sighs and falls back against her sleeping bag. Through the slit in their tent Vala can see that the sky is still dark red, and it is many hours until morning.

She settles beside Sam, though she doubts she can sleep. "Tell me your favorite memory."

"I have lots."

"Tell me one."

"Okay… Mom drove us to Florida when I was twelve. Mark was a brat, you know, he was a teenager and _way too cool_ for a family vacation. Dad had leave and he was with as all day every day. I can't remember what we did, or where we went, or what we ate, but it was good. It was great."

"It sounds fantastic."

"Yeah." Sam is crying, and Vala cannot begrudge her that.

She remembers finding out that Selmak was dead. She had grieved, briefly, but she had not spared a thought for the human in whom the Tok'ra had died. Selmak was legendary, his alliance with SG-1 even more so, but there were few in the galaxy who would remember Jacob Carter.

Vala takes Sam's hand. "You'll remember them. It's all you can do."

It is something Teal'c might have said.

 

* * *

 

 

It is days of scouting side-by-side, searching for water, learning the hard way what fruit is edible; nights of breathing in unison and waking up to Sam's hand wedged in hers, until Vala realizes that neither one of them has cried in quite some time.

"We've been here for three weeks."

"It's driving me crazy," Sam jitters her feet to prove her point. She feels charged, like maybe running headlong into Wraith HQ doesn't sound like such a bad idea. She feels useless so far from the fight, and Vala feels it too. It is an old and familiar feeling, cultivated during the time Vala spent in the Ori galaxy.

Sam continues to work on the DHD, removing and replacing and rearranging the crystals until Vala is surprised the thing still manages to work.

Vala thinks it is a pointless task, but she never really has understood false hope. "How do you plan on dialling to another galaxy without an external power source?"

"Maybe I'll get lucky."

"Maybe you'll blow yourself up."

This time it is Sam who rolls her eyes.

"If you blow yourself up, then where would I be?"

Sam wipes her hands on her jacket and regards Vala with a disbelieving stare. "Yeah, like you need me. You don't need anyone, you're _Vala._ " She waves her hand mysteriously as though this proves her point. "You could just contact some old buddy and be out of here like that." She clicks her fingers.

Vala is stunned. "Assuming there's anyone left out there."

"Oh, there is. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there's always someone, _somewhere_."

"I don't know… I think, this time, it's us. It's just us." The last thing Vala saw before vaulting through the gate after Sam was the internal structure of the mountain cracking inwards; the last thing she felt was rushing heat at her back from Wraith missiles. The last thing she heard was Daniel's voice ( _I'm right behind you – dammit where is Mitchell? – go Vala!)_. "I think we're it."

Sam shrugs.

"But anyway – you're wrong. I wouldn't leave you here. I wouldn't. Not now. We're… we're a team, right? Even if the others are…" She can't say 'dead', will not allow that word purchase in her mind. "Even if it's just me and you, we're still a team. At least we're together."

"Yeah," says Sam, "We are." She reaches forward and takes Vala's wrist between her fingers. Sam's grip is strong and steady, and Vala can close her eyes and pretend everything is okay. Vala feels roughness against her skin; Sam has grazes and burn-marks that Vala hasn't noticed before, long red marks that reach from her palm to the inside of her wrist, scarred and dried but marked all the same.

Vala has no such scars. She wonders if there was more she could have done, but perhaps not.

It is fully dark when Sam decides to join Vala in the tent that night. It must be nearing the end of the month because the moon above them is stick-thin and glints with pinkish light reflecting from the suns. In any other circumstance, Vala might find it beautiful.

Sam lines her boots against the entrance. No amount of apocalypses will be able to break the military training out of Colonel Carter. Vala smiles into her pillow.

As she settles down, Sam reaches over to take Vala's hand.

"I'm sorry," she says, "About earlier. I was angry, I – I know you'd never run away."

"Yes. And, I _do_ need you, especially now."

"But why? You're Vala Mal Doran." Vala wonders if any of the original members of SG-1 had managed to shake their original view of her as a marauding space pirate. She has been a queen, twice, and a god to boot, but it is her criminal past that people remember her by.

"You're Samantha, that's why."

Because Vala may have stolen her way through the stars, but the stars themselves belong to Sam.

 

* * *

 

 

Sam catches a fish. At least, she assures Vala it is a fish.

"It was in the water. Ergo, I'm guessing it's a fish. It has gills, at least." She twirls it around on the spit, its leathery skin turning black in the flames. Vala watches it cook slowly. Its skin is a reddish bronze color and it smells a little like mint, like maybe it might actually taste nice.

"What we need," says Sam at length, "Is a nice white wine."

"And cheesecake!"

"Maybe some candles."

"I can manage some mostly-filtered water and those strange insects that light up in the dark, how does that sound?"

Sam throws back her head and actually laughs, a real laugh, the kind Vala hasn't heard since coming to P3X-706. "Sounds perfect."

They eat on the sandy bank beside the lake, the 'fish' on their laps in metal trays. They watch the three suns go down in quick succession and listen to the fauna buzz and hum, and Vala has her bare feet resting in the warm water, and it's so soothing she could very easily fall asleep.

"It's been four weeks."

"Yes," says Vala, because Sam seems to expect an answer.

"I've been thinking, we should… do _something._ "

"Do you have a plan?"

"Not as such. But right now anything that isn't 'stay here until we die' is looking good."

Vala doesn't have a response to that. Sam says 'do something' and thinks of returning home, searching high and low for her friends, her family, being proactive and preferably not dying in the process. Vala says 'do something' and thinks of finding a ship, as fancy as possible, and avoiding the Wraith for as long as they can manage. Sam is a good soldier, Vala thinks, she would never leave her post.

"Samantha. There's nothing to go back to." She pokes Sam's ribs in a hope to tempt another smile from her, but has no luck.

Sam sticks out her chin and Vala can tell she's trying not to cry. "There has to be something. I don't know who I am without the Air Force. Without a planet to defend."

"You're Samantha Carter: second most fabulous woman on this planet." The rest, Vala thinks, will work itself out in time.


End file.
